Office / Windows "how to count"

[- Bobb -]

When making slides from a presentation I often get this problem. Is there
any fix out there to generate files called slide 01,
02,03,04,05,06,07,08,09,10,11 rather than 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11 ? so that
when viewing the folder the files are in order.

Better yet, anyone have a patch to " teach Windows Explorer " to count

I think that I LIKE EVERY OTHER PERSON on this planet
would like it to count 1, 2 ,3 ,4 ,5 ,6 ,7 ,8 ,9 ,10 ,11 ,12 ,13 ,14 ,15 ,16
,17 ,18 ,19 ,20 ...
and NOT 1,10 ,11 ,12 ...19, 2 ,20,21,22,23...

bobb

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

In spite of your Subject line, your question has little to do
with Office and nothing with Windows. It is a PowerPoint
question. I recommend you repost it in a PowerPoint
newsgroup - this is where the experts hang out.

 

[SaltPeter]

When making slides from a presentation I often get this problem. Is there
any fix out there to generate files called slide 01,
02,03,04,05,06,07,08,09,10,11 rather than 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11 ? so that
when viewing the folder the files are in order.

Slides or presentation applications don't qualify as operating system
issues.

Better yet, anyone have a patch to " teach Windows Explorer " to count

I think that I LIKE EVERY OTHER PERSON on this planet
would like it to count 1, 2 ,3 ,4 ,5 ,6 ,7 ,8 ,9 ,10 ,11 ,12 ,13 ,14 ,15 ,16
,17 ,18 ,19 ,20 ...
and NOT 1,10 ,11 ,12 ...19, 2 ,20,21,22,23...

bobb

Windows Explorer doesn't see an integer when it reads a '1'. In order to
satisfy humans and our need for labels, folders are given character based
names. Therefore the operating system is indeed reading a "string" of chars.

Which explains why its specifically discouraged by the OS manuafcaturer to
use a number scheme to sequence a set of files. The reason is that a '1' is
not a number, it's a char in a string.

For the sake or argument, replace '0' with 'a', '1' with 'b', '2' with 'c'.
To the explorer, reading and sorting sequence of "1,2,10,20" is exactly the
same as sorting through "b,c,ba,ca" which results in:

b
ba
c
ca

or

1
10
2
20

which is exactly the sorted sequence you see.

 

[Bob I]

Start numbering at 10 and quit at 99 is the easiest workaround I know.

 

[Dan Seur]

This is not a counting problem. In fact, it's not a problem at all. The
order that so offends you is the result of a standard sort. Try
numbering your slides (and any other set of files you want to see in
what you think of as numerical order) using leading zeroes. 01 thru 99
will sort as you desire. Also 001 thru 999, 0001 thru 9999. You get the
drift...

To make it plainer if necessary, in a standard ascending ASCII character
sort on filename, files named 1name.txt through 999name.txt will sort in
an order that disturbs you, because 11name.txt comes before 2name.txt;
all numeric characters are "lower" than all alphabetics. HOWEVER,
001name.txt, 002name.txt...011name.txt...020name.txt...999name.txt will
sort "correctly". Just another reason why the zero, a concept discovered
by Og around the 5th millenium BCE while doing his budget, has really
caught on.

There's probably a setting in whatever application generates and names
such files that lets you specify the "seed" for naming, in other words
the numbering convention 001x instead of 1x, which the app will then
follow incrementally. As Pegasus suggests, the PowerPoint newsgroup is
the place to get advice for that app if the above doesn't help.

You may have noticed, if you archive files/folders by year as I do, that
97...98...99...00..01...02...03...04 will appear out of order in
Explorer, but the 4-digit years will appear in order. The latter is
convenient if you measure the passage of time in subsecond increments
and frustrate easily. And as an aside (if I'm not already too far
afield) a lot of hasty database recoding had to be done around the year
2000 when vast hosts of people involved with legacy software noticed
this for the first time. Hardware too was found deficient. There was
even, IIRC, some concern that Armageddon was at hand.

There is, of course, always the option of keeping those PowerPoint
presentations shorter than 10 slides, which is about the limit of many
audiences' ability to keep their eyelids up.

Much more than you asked for, but what the heck - the night is young.